Column: 2023 survey asked Bloomington residents if they voted 2x a week or more. Let’s do better in 2025.

Every two years since 2017,  Bloomington residents have been surveyed by an outside consulting company about their attitudes on a variety of subjects.

It was an off year in 2024, but in 2025, the city is planning to pay for another survey, according to the mayor’s office. Many, if not most, of the questions have repeated from year to year, which is useful for spotting trends over time.

Each year, when the report of results is produced, there’s at least some grousing about the questions that are asked and the way they are asked.

Today’s request from The B Square is that you take some time to review the questions asked in 2023, and use a simple two-box feedback form  to provide some feedback. Use the first box to critique 2023 questions. Use the second box to make suggestions for next year’s survey.

The B Square will bundle up all the feedback and send it off to the mayor’s office by the end of the day on Monday (Oct. 28).

Is your help actually needed? Yes!

The lead art for this piece is meant to demonstrate that the 2023 survey had at least a couple of undisputed flaws.

A question about the frequency of participation in different activities included an item that should be at the top of everyone’s mind right now: voting in local elections. The multiple choice options asking about frequency were: 2 times a week or more; 3–4 times a month; once a month or less; or not at all.

As enthusiastic as we hope that civic participation will be in the Bloomington community, I don’t think we should accommodate voting any more than once per election.

How did Polco, Inc., the survey research company, report results from that item? No results were reported on voting as an activity. That seems like the right approach.

For a different botched item, Polco, Inc. did report results. There’s an item that asks what respondents like least about the city of Bloomington. One of the multiple-choice options was listed as “Parking Homelessness”. Those were clearly meant to be separate choices.

In the previous survey from 2021, the “like least” item was an open end, which meant respondents had to fill in what they liked least, with no options from which to choose. The transition from open end to multiple choice might account for the mistake.

In 2023, the responses for that item look like they were analyzed as if the option had been just been “Homelessness” without including “Parking.”

The city has paid almost $30,000 per survey to have this kind of work done. As long as we’re spending the money, let’s make it the best survey possible.

2023 survey questions

B Square feedback form